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Revenge is in the air. Randy Newman's being attacked by legions of short people. Hippies are getting decked by the punks. John Travolta has danced in on a wave of dumb chic. And Woody Allen, the poor, besotted little shnook — but funny, right? — from the '60s, has finally driven Diane Keaton to complain that he wants sex too often.
Revenge. Everyone's getting his. Bitterness and recrimination abound. The mood's gloomy, the tone's dour. So watch who you snub these days — that little wimp with the heavy glasses, the jacket three sizes too big and the nasty expression just might turn out to be the next king of rock 'n' roll.
Which is more or less what Elvis Costello figures to be. In less than a year and with only one album, My Aim Is True, to his credit, Costello has become the prime mover of the new mood. He rarely talks to anybody; when he does, it's not always nice. He's told the music industry to "slag off," not an entirely unworthy or novel sentiment. But he's different from all those who've said it before. He means it.
Which explains, in part, why he only plays small clubs like El Mocambo, where he's performing Monday and Tuesday nights. It also explains why his appearance is expected to attract a crowd that'll start lining up four hours before he gets on stage. He's hot right now, but not just in the way his record company, Columbia, or his audience thinks. He's like a red-hot coal no one can fan into a flame or ever douse. He just keeps burning in his own way, on his own time.
Understanding Elvis Costello has become a small sub-industry within the rock writing business these days for this reason: He rejects not only the role of rock hero, but the role of rock's anti-heroes as well. He won't become the next Elton John, nor the next Bob Dylan. He even rejects the idea that he's rejecting anything.
He won't talk about his past because, he says, it's not important, although he did admit once that his real name was Declan Costello and that he was born in Whitton, Middlesex. His reasons for rejecting his past are telling. "Nobody showed any interest in me then," he says. "If you weren't there you missed it and that's it. It's gone. The people who were there then either appreciated it or they didn't. The past would only be relevant to them."
Rejection bred rejection and now it seems Costello's not about to give any more than he once got — which isn't much.
His biography is sketchy: He's 22, was raised a Roman Catholic, is married and has a child. He's played guitar for about eight years, written songs almost as long, and once worked — as V. P. Costello — in such London area clubs as Dingwalls and The Marquee fronting a bluegrass band called Flip City. After his first demo record was shelved by Stiff Records he went to work as a computer programmer in an Elizabeth Arden plant.
Why did he start calling himself Elvis? "Why not?" he shoots back.
Which doesn't answer the question, of course. What Costello seems to understand about the mysteries surrounding him is that there really are no mysteries. Before he gained some recognition as a recording artist, there was nothing remarkable about his life at all. That's why his lyrics are streaked with so much pent-up bitterness: They're his revenge.
Someone who has worked in computer programming knows about systems, about how they streamline only relevant data and exclude everything else. Costello's life and maybe those of others, his lyrics say, weren't part of the system, so it's about time the system was wrecked.
He doesn't sing about romance as much as about what it isn't. "I said, 'I'm so happy I could die,'" go the lines to one song. "She said, 'Drop dead,' and left with another guy."
Then there's: "And I'm doin' everything just tryin' to please her, even crawling around on all fours, well I thought by now it was gonna be easy, but she still seems to want for more."
Costello sings it all straight, without any faked fury within the context of the small rock band sound. There's nothing remarkable about the sound, just as there's nothing remarkable about his singing. Neither is so exceptional that its difference, on its own, would cause the music to stand out.
In some quarters, it all passes for new-wave. While Costello shares certain antagonisms with other new wave rockers, he works from an entirely different base. Much in new wave is a distorted mirror of the safe, middle-class world around it that the new-wave rockers have had to step out of.
Not Costello. He's still at the centre, the numb, put-upon centre of things. He's taking his revenge from within. He's quite right when he says there's nothing to talk about in his past. He was a nothing, then, remember? Like Woody Allen's characters or all the other poor shnooks out there.
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